** Only 4 spots left!! **
SUBLIME STUPIDITY I:
An Introduction to Red Nose Theater Clown (yours, that is)
with Elizabeth Baron
Sat and Sun, June 27 - 28, 2015
Santa Cruz, CA (USA)
Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center
To REGISTER, email LaLaTheater@gmail.com
- Schedule: Saturday 11 am - 7 pm / Sunday 10 am - 6 pm
- Studio Location: Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center (TWDCC)
- Ages: 16 and Older
- Class Size: Max. 10 / Min. 6
- Clothing: Clothes you can move in - not too baggy
- Color of clothes: Black preferred, or gray
- WORKSHOP COST: $ 255 / $ 225 (Early Bird Discount)
- EARLY BIRD: Deposit must be RECEIVED by JUNE 5!
- DEPOSIT: $100 (Deposit is non-refundable and required to enroll in the workshop)
SUBLIME STUPIDITY: The focus of this weekend intensive workshop is on giving birth to your clown. The clown is based on you – your body, your movement, and many elements of you as yet unnoticed and/or un-celebrated. The tools we use to help you discover and begin to play as your clown are drawn from myriad Mask and Movement-Theater techniques and traditions. By identifying and learning to glory in what is uniquely and inherently stupid about each of us, we begin to know and embody our clowns. Ironically, these qualities, which we often are unaware of and/or struggle to keep hidden from those around us, are in fact the gateways to hysterically funny, profound and sublimely simple work.
This approach to clown is rigorous in terms of physicality and specificity. Participants will be asked to listen to themselves and to the reactions of the ‘audience’ (the rest of the class) with the intense curiosity of a scientist. Through the workshop, participants will gain the skills and insight to create in the moment, based on this ‘listening.’ They will also laugh a lot, quite hard, and probably be moved to tears by the other clowns. This blend of rigorous technique and laughter combines to birth and nurture the first days of play in the lives of each participant's clown.
The workshop is useful for performers and non-performers, alike! It helps us tap into a resource hidden inside each of us, providing us with insight, creativity and freedom for years to come.
ELIZABETH BARON is an award-winning teacher, director, actor and collaborative theater-maker. She leads mask, voice, acting, red nose, and movement workshops and classes throughout the US and Internationally. Elizabeth was part of the teaching team at GIOVANNI FUSETTI's international school of theater creation – HÈLIKOS: Scuola Internazionale di Creazione Teatrale, in Florence, Italy. She holds an MFA in Lecoq Based Actor-Created Physical Theater, from Naropa University/London International School of the Performing Arts (LISPA.)
She is known for her compassionate, humor-filled teaching style, and her deep love of and belief in the power of the Red Nose to unlock our hidden, delightful selves. Liz sees this work as an invaluable tool for the artist, connecting us to an endless source of creativity and poetry, and providing a treasure trove of insight and inspiration. All while being very stupid.
Liz is a generous and committed artist and a sensitive, hearted and insightful teacher. Her clown, Mowanna, taught me about vulnerability and the openness of the clown heart. I am delighted to recommend her as a clown teacher: she will joyfully cast the spell of the red nose onto you.
Sublime Stupidity Banner Credit: Alex Miles Younger Photography
Student and Teacher Blurbs
I loved it. I felt held and I felt totally engaged in the work, and I feel that you have such a gift for bringing out each person's soft spots and gently bringing them to the surface, beautiful work. The best performance I have seen in a long time… What a lovely, exciting, fun, brilliant workshop you brought to us.
-- Joanna Rotkin, Joanna and the Agitators - Movement Educator, Choreographer and Performer,
For anyone considering attending, just know that I seriously consider this to be one of the most profound classes I've ever taken in my life. It (along with the teacher) deserve a love letter. I signed up intending to learn a little about clowning, but I came away with the feeling I'd gone through a transformation. In a way, it was a soul retrieval. But instead of a steady drumbeat, it was the laughter of my classmates and the careful attention Liz held for us all that revived a lovable and comedic part of myself. I compare all classes, workshops, therapies and healings to this weekend, and they all fall a little short.
Liz is a powerful (and unsurprisingly now world renowned) teacher, and these workshops in the states are becoming a rare thing in the States...
-- Ted Reavey - AandD Counselor at Community Works
Thank you again for leading us through this most amazing work. I've never had this much fun learning so intensely. You are gifted in recognizing and encouraging the playful aspects of each person and in getting the group to engage meaningfully with each other. I experienced insights into myself and my relationships that astonished and explained so much – much more than therapy or any other method of self-exploration! I can't thank you enough for bringing your wisdom and compassion to bear on the human vulnerability we all share.
-- Katie McElroy
Liz is a powerful, insightful, compassionate and incredibly keen warrior. A true teacher. I love her.
-- Tory Capron, Senior Teacher - The Dharma Ocean Foundation
After the first workshop: If you are reading this and are considering taking a workshop with Liz Baron, please do, for yourself and the world. This is some seriously life-changing stupidity she’s dish’n out and I recommend it fully150%. The two-day clown workshop was hilarious and profound, as well as tremendous fun... Liz took the dynamics between all of us completely in stride, supporting and challenging us firmly and compassionately. I have been clowning professionally for many years and found this workshop to be both rigorous and worthwhile, as did my friends who were on stage for the first time.
So yeah: Red Nose Workshop?: Invaluable investment in life, onstage and off. (Questions email: info@petesweet.com)
After the third workshop: (I've taken) Liz's red nose workshop 3 times - cause it's just that good. I'd take it again tomorrow... or when I'm 65.
... As a teacher Liz has nigh super-natural powers of listening and guides students of all levels "down the rabbit hole" to explore the richest parts of themselves and transpose it into moving theater performances. She has been one of the most important influences in my development as an artist. I've had breakthroughs in her workshops that have completely exploded my expressive ability both as an artist and as a person.
-- Peter Sweet, International Circus and Theater Artist
For someone totally new to the world of clowning and performance art, and a little bit uncomfortable about my body, I found the Red Nose workshop extremely accessible, welcoming, and useful. There was no wrong way to move or wrong thing to do with my body, yet the workshop was cleverly structured and focused. It improved the way I look at my body and my own movement, and how I perceive others. Liz's insights and observations were excellent, and watching other people's clowns emerge over the course of the workshop was completely fascinating. Months later, I still think about the workshop and let my clown come out every once in a while, and I would recommend the workshop to anyone, and I'd happily take another one someday!
-- Matt Chisholm
I thoroughly enjoyed Sublime Stupidity I and I feel that this is a wild combination of joy and important work. I at once felt both vulnerable and empowered. I also see an area of study and sensitivities yet to be explored. This clowning stuff becomes profound when I realize that aspects like knowing my intention and knowing when not to have an intention are applicable across the full spectrum of my life.
--- Daniel Mandel, Singer/Songwriter
Was such a wonderful re-birthing my experience with Liz in the Sublime Stupidity. Discovering a totally new clown, surfing an emotional path with such a tender guide like Elizabeth. Thanks so much for the love and passion for bringing the real clown out of each one of us in so short time! I loved it!
-- Francesca Zannier – Artist, clown, performer - Ibiza, Spain
Doing "Sublime Stupidity" with Liz has been an intense and touching two-day workshop. Her students were met with immense delicacty. From the fun excitement of the first day, all the way to the deep and fragile work on oneself, which roused us all the way through to the end of the training. The hours went fast and filled us with tears and laughter. The group's chemistry was pretty powerful.
Elizabeth is the kind of teacher who is able to fearlessly put her good human qualities in her work. Such as her sensitivity, her strength, equivalent to that of a super-party leader, matched by her care for small things all while keeping the bigger picture in sight, and lastly her attention to individual needs.
What she offers is precious and unique. The most beautiful thing is that she offers it with love! Priceless!
-- Teresa Scaletti, Florence, Italy
Ms. Baron is an enthusiastic and engaging teacher, who is able to meet students on their level (whatever level that might be) and inspire them to work and make discoveries about both the topic and themselves. Her enthusiasm and professionalism in her work carries over into her teaching, and she sets a lively and productive atmosphere in the classroom/ performance laboratory. She provides a supportive environment for creative play and active learning that encourages students to take risks and try new things.
-- Elizabeth Ann Jochum, M.A., Department of Theatre and Dance – University of Colorado, Boulder
My main clown workshop goal was to become a better teacher by becoming more comfortable speaking in front of people. At first I thought I had failed, as my clown did not like being on stage either. But that was the lesson. I knew that I had an affinity for experiential education, hence my career choices; but the embrace of my discomfort and learning that I seek refuge in the crowd/audience has helped me to move around the "classroom" more freely and allowed me to more instinctively recognize and use teachable moments. I am unable to hide what I am feeling, yet I thought I had to hide my vulnerabilities, however not my faults, when teaching. I used to teach middle school math in the summers to bright, inner city kids, and thought I had lost my ability to teach.
I am finding success in the classroom again with this current group of students. Thanks Liz!
-- Fai Au
Like a first ever orgasm .... when Sublime Stupidity approaches initially, it carries some tension and excitement..... As it builds, it feels a little unfamiliar but there's something very natural about it.... something almost familiar.... When it breaks on you, it is with an irresistible, merciless intensity of pleasure. At the peak, there are moments when everything in the universe seems to finally make sense... and you are left feeling strangely peaceful and fearless. . .
Afterwards you are very tired and sleepy, or, you get up and reorganize all the closets in your house.
In other words, I recommend it...
-- Josh Medley, New Leaf Psychotherapy Center
I loved the Red Nose Workshop with Liz Baron! I have never taken a Red Nose workshop before nor have had much theater experience but Liz's teaching style made the work extremely accessible to even the novice actor like myself. Liz has a remarkable ability of creating a safe space for the exploration of one's material to emerge while also encouraging you to dive deeper and fully embody the process. I highly recommend this workshop and can't wait to attend more with Liz in the future!
-- Brie Anderson, Therapist and Adoption Specialist
Delavnica od Liz je totalno huda. Sli boste tja pa prsli drgacni nazaj. Vejetno boste tut mutiral!! (The workshop with Liz is like an orangutan with wings. Don't ever miss it!!) ...Thanks Elizabeth Baron. The best clown teacher in the world.
-- Tina Janezic, Artist, Performer, Clown - Slovenia
Having attended much longer red-nose workshops, I was curious to see how much Liz could do with a weekend. Wow! Liz guided us into some stirring and playful time in just a few hours. Everyone had the opportunity to explore their clowns. What impresses me most about Liz's teaching is her keen clown-vision. What she sees in someone is often so penetrating and clear, and it always provokes learning.
Liz also has the grace to allow herself to not get locked into a particular idea with someone's clown. Her insights seem at once precise and open, as perhaps parents can know their children and continue to know them more as they grow. Aside from her knowledge and passion for evoking clown, Liz practiced great time-management skills, good reading of and response to group-energy, and she provided a safe, well-guardianed learning/playing environment.
-- Jeffry Buechler
Elizabeth's luminous energy, her compassionate and incisive guidance, and her delight in the process were hugely important to me. Her mastery of this form is undeniable. She taught me to feel and use my fears, instead of denying and blocking them. This work changed my experience of myself.
-- Margaret Baron
Amazing workshop people, I had so much fun with myself and with the other clowns, such a tender work, so real, so vulnerable and so sublime!
And Liz, one of the best clown teachers I've ever had, brilliant, funny, so gentle and so strong at the same time. I highly recommend this work to anybody that wants to take their stupidity to the most real level.
-- Mery Miguez, Performer and Clown
Taking a Red Nose workshop with Elizabeth Baron was a great Odyssey. As a novice in clown art, I felt that we were on a ship, not exactly knowing the direction we were supposed to head up to when we started but I knew that the team was safe and that the shore would be rewarding.
And it was. We explored our inner clowns individually and collectively.
We rediscovered all the spectrum of human emotions through them.
Liz's gift to help you shape your clown's birth through body movement is amazing.
Yep, it was like being pregnant and having a great midwife at your side, someone with no judgment and very supportive.
-- Cecile Kyriakos, Dept of French and Italian, University of Colorado at Boulder
